"If" // process
Jul. 6th, 2014 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pondhopI've glimpsed at least two versions of this on Twitter so far:
[The photos depict Roger Federer blowing a kiss to the crowd after one of his Wimbledon victories and after today's loss to Novak Djokovic. The poem has a history with Federer fans, because he and Rafa recorded a reading of it together three years ago or so.]
Coincidentally, I pulled a clipping from a file a few minutes ago where Joni Mitchell calls "If" "just about my favorite poem." In the article, which appeared in the New York Times in 2007 (Working Three Shifts, Plus Outrage Overtime, about her collaboration with the Alberta Ballet). I suspect I saved the article in part because it talks about Mitchell's interdisciplinary interests ("Music, art, dance: Ms. Mitchell calls it 'crop rotation'") and night-owlery (the "'short moment' [the Alberta Ballet's director] had requested turned into one of her inimitable all-nighters..."), and especially because Mitchell and her interviewer (David Yaffe) discuss a song she was working on. Yaffe writes:
This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/381419.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same pic.twitter.com/brJENv2WpR
— Fatima (@FatimaAsh) July 6, 2014[The photos depict Roger Federer blowing a kiss to the crowd after one of his Wimbledon victories and after today's loss to Novak Djokovic. The poem has a history with Federer fans, because he and Rafa recorded a reading of it together three years ago or so.]
Coincidentally, I pulled a clipping from a file a few minutes ago where Joni Mitchell calls "If" "just about my favorite poem." In the article, which appeared in the New York Times in 2007 (Working Three Shifts, Plus Outrage Overtime, about her collaboration with the Alberta Ballet). I suspect I saved the article in part because it talks about Mitchell's interdisciplinary interests ("Music, art, dance: Ms. Mitchell calls it 'crop rotation'") and night-owlery (the "'short moment' [the Alberta Ballet's director] had requested turned into one of her inimitable all-nighters..."), and especially because Mitchell and her interviewer (David Yaffe) discuss a song she was working on. Yaffe writes:
There was simply too much to express.
''You've only got so much space, and that's the point,'' she said. ''That's the art. In a very short space, you need pertinent details while knowing what to leave out.'' One song she's still revising is called ''Shine.''
''It starts, 'Shine on Vegas and Wall Street/Place your bets,' '' she said. ''You could write a thousand verses. 'Shine on the dazzling darkness that mends us when we sleep/Shine on what we throw away and what we keep.' I have written about 60 different verses and rhyming couplets to this thing, and I've kept 12. Are they the best ones? I don't know. I could write 60 a week. What are the 12 most important things to illuminate? It's overwhelming.''
This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/381419.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.